A jury in Louisiana awarded more than $9 billion in the first federal bellwether trial over claims that taking diabetes drug Actos increases the risk of bladder cancer. The verdict — the first of nearly 3,000 lawsuits coordinated for pretrial purposes before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Doherty in Lafayette, La. — emerged on April 7. “You don’t get something like this because the jury is upset about a mistake here or there,” said lead plaintiffs attorney W. Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm in Houston. Defendants Takeda Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. said the facts didn’t support the outcome and vowed to appeal.
JOBS MARKET LACKLUSTER
Entry-level employment data released on April 9 by the American Bar Association revealed a stalled market for young lawyers. Altogether, 57 percent of the 46,776 students who graduated in 2013 found full-time, long-term jobs that required bar passage within nine months of graduation, compared with 56.2 percent the previous year. An additional 10.1 percent landed jobs for which a J.D. was an advantage but not required, up from 9.5 percent. The percentage of recent graduates still looking for work rose to 11.2 percent.
